How Sermoneta was built and evolved over time

Sermoneta has been built defensively on the same slope for three thousand years, in two completely different techniques.

The older is on the ridge above. On Monte Carbolino, remains of large walls in polygonal work are documented — the mortar-free technique of pre-Roman Latium, the same family of construction as Alatri's acropolis. What matters is the interpretation: these have been read not as simple agricultural terracing but as part of a complex organised on several levels, with both residential and defensive function.

The later is on the hill below. The massive castle was built by the Annibaldi family, then purchased and expanded by the Caetani in the thirteenth century — so the structure a visitor sees is a takeover rather than a single conception.

The walled town assembled around it, as walled hill towns do, with the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria Assunta of the thirteenth century at its centre.

And a third kind of building sits below, by a different logic: the Cistercian abbey of Valvisciolo, placed in the valley rather than on the height, as the order's houses generally were.